


baby, don't you know you are stardust

by santamonicayachtclub



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: College, Drinking, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13787769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santamonicayachtclub/pseuds/santamonicayachtclub
Summary: College boys shotgunning in the back of a truck.





	baby, don't you know you are stardust

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lyric from [California Girls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA2OtDUFBWI) by NoMBe. 
> 
> The song Rhett sings is [Cosmic Charlie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDZs7cKGzDU) by the Grateful Dead.

The weekend is teetering on the edge of midnight and Rhett is spending it wrapped in the rapidly chilling air, humming with energy.

It should seem ominous, wandering off alone in the middle of the night, but he drinks in the sudden lull with unbridled gratefulness. The spindly, barely budding trees of Raleigh’s pastoral Park Avenue are drenched in darkness, pockmarked by the occasional glow of a neighborhood window. Several yards behind him is the hulking white form of the FarmHouse, not to be confused with an ordinary farmhouse, where all the music and chatter of a typical college party is blurring into a distant buzz of sound.

Rhett needs a little more distance and a little less sound right now.

There was too much noise and smoke filling up the inside, and there was no way in hell he was following Gregg and Patrick up on the roof, so he’d grabbed his guitar and beat feet for the treeline to take a breather. And maybe take a little more than that, too.

Link finds him, of course.

He’s stretched in the back of Paul Lacot’s truck, chosen specifically because the back is constantly full of feed sacks and horse blankets and because Paul’s parked so far off the road he’s practically in the bushes, so there’s little chance of anyone else wandering back that far. Rhett suspects there’s more than feed sacks that get laid on Paul’s blankets, but it’s none of his business. By the time Link appears, Rhett is picking out a riff and mumble-crooning his way through a Grateful Dead mishmash.

“How’d you know I was out here?”

“Heard the guitar from the backyard,” Link says simply, like it’s no big deal he could pick out the sound of Rhett’s strumming over the clamber of revelry. He pronounces it gee-tar without a trace of irony and Rhett feels a sudden, inexplicable surge of affection.

“Needed a break, huh?” asks Link, swinging his way into the flatbed alongside him.

“Yeah,” Rhett replies, scooting over to make room. Solitude still counts when he’s with Link, Link who’s essentially an extension of himself, albeit a shockingly blue-eyed extension that Rhett can’t quite believe is real sometimes.

Since he can’t say any of this out loud, he goes back to his one-man jam session. _Rosy red and electric blue, I bought you a paddle for your paper canoe._

Link picks up on this and joins in for the next verse.

 

_Say you'll come back when you can_

_Whenever your airplane happens to land_

_Maybe I'll be back here too_

_It all depends on what's with you._

 

“Huh.” Link tilts his head. “Never really noticed, but that’s kinda romantic.”

Rhett’s fingers freeze. The word echoes in his ears, resonating in a hidden drawer in the back of his mind that, Rhett suddenly realizes, had been expecting it for who knows how long.

He raises a brow, lets a sardonic smile hook the corner of his mouth. “Romantic, huh?”

“Ain't nothing wrong with a little romance,” Link answers with a shrug.

Rhett can’t think of a response to that, or at least not one that won’t make the world shatter apart. His world, anyway. Sometimes it seems like the world slides off Link so easily, and sometimes Rhett envies that until it makes his stomach twist.  

Instead, he focuses on the strings humming under his fingertips and the pressure of Link’s shoulder resting flush with his own.

“Cosmic Charlie,” Link says musingly, when Rhett pauses to slide a lighter out of his jeans, “that could’ve been me in another life.”

“Could still be you in this one,” Rhett points out, even though Link is cosmic already, his smile lighting up the night ten times more than the brightest star. He carefully lays the guitar aside and fishes into his pocket again.

Link’s eyes widen. “Dude.”

“Dave rolled me one,” Rhett explains, watching the twisted white paper catch flame. “Said he owed me for helping him move. Wanna share?”

Normally he’s wary about stealing the occasional high, and as far as he knows Link is even cagier, but this is different. It’s just the two of them, alone together and north enough of the north campus to be free of recrimination.

“Wait, I got somethin’ too!” With a disproportionate amount of pride, Link reaches into his hoodie and whips out a bottle of peach schnapps.

Rhett groans around a stream of smoke.

Link glowers, or tries to. “It’s sweet and not too strong and nobody else wanted any.”

“It’s like drinkin’ a melted slushie off the floor at 7-11, man.”

Meeting his eyes, Link takes a very long and pointed swig.

There are worse ways to spend a night. Carolina breezes and Georgia peaches and suffused in the dizzying rush of being alive. Feed sack pillows and a desultory soundtrack when Rhett sets the joint aside to settle the guitar in his lap again. The stars are so bright they rip open the clouds and Link is still next to him, practically resting his head on Rhett’s shoulder and sipping with perfect contentment, both of them bracketed by metal and blanketed by sky. The faint balm of spring is in the air, but not enough to negate the need for another blanket, so Rhett unfolds one over their updrawn knees.

“‘s kinda chilly,” Rhett murmurs by way of explanation, letting his arm slide around Link’s waist. And Link, baby-faced cosmic Charlie with his lithe whiplash of a body, goes shimmying his way a little closer to keep warm.

Rhett lays his guitar aside again, leaving his lap conveniently vacated. Just in case.

“Wanna hit?” Rhett offers again. Link is a lightweight and knows it, and they both learned along ago that he can’t gauge his own reactions based on Rhett’s. A buzz that rolls over Rhett like a summer breeze might very well lay Link out like a tornado.

The breath from Link’s giggle buffs the side of his neck. “Dunno if that’s a good idea.”

Rhett swallows down the anxiety swelling in his throat like a balloon. “Want an indirect hit?”

Link’s brow puckers adorably. “‘What’s that even mean? I lean in and waft it out of your mouth?”

“Not quite.”

Cole was the one who taught him how to take a hit, back behind the toolshed when Rhett was fifteen. Swearing him to secrecy and reminding him to try and exhale the smoke first if he had to cough. Rhett had failed abysmally and his lungs had burned like hell afterward, but he’s gotten better with the occasional practice session over the years.

The tutorial he has in mind for Link right now is a little different.   

“I’m gonna get in real close and you just need to open your mouth, ‘kay? Then breathe in when I breathe out.”

He’s waiting for Link to giggle again, to swat him aside like a bad joke, or worse, to look at him with a face contorted with revulsion.

Instead, he just angles himself a little better and obligingly parts his lips.

Rhett puts the joint to his mouth and sucks until the end glows red and his head swims with wonder.

And then he has a hand wrapping around Link’s slender neck to pull him in tighter, closer, breathing intoxication into his mouth without touching their lips together.

Link’s eyes are enormous when they part for breath, his upturned face a tangle of emotion.

“Oh man, that was...it’s strong, huh?” The words tremble out of him like a guitar riff, like trying to pick out an unfamiliar song with three broken strings, earnest and uncertain.

And Rhett waits, his stomach sour with fear, his silence as acrid in his throat as the smoke.

Link can’t seem to stop talking. “Dude, that was pretty awesome, I didn’t know that was even a thing. But I guess if you wanna smoke just a little but not _smoke_ smoke, then it’s like...shit, it’s _practical_ , even. Like, it just makes so much sense.”

It’s such a pure Link response, ever the backwater businessman: no shame in the route you take to get there if it gets the job done. Then he laughs, wild and high-pitched. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that kinda made me think of how my Nana taught me how to blow bubble gum bubbles. She’d like, she’d pre-chew it and make it the right shape, then take it out of her mouth and--”

He’s babbling now, not to mention bringing his Nana into this, so Rhett shushes him. Gently, with smoke and lips and tongue and a kiss. A real one this time. Pouring the drugs from his lungs, past his teeth, letting the haze of it ride on his tongue as it presses against Link’s, pushing the thick smoke into his hot, clever mouth.

And Link lets him.

Link more than lets him; he breathes back into him, a proper shotgun, wisps of smoke and soft breath.

Rhett’s brain is reeling, somersaulting in disbelief. Link’s mouth is still on his, the heat and softness of his lips running through Rhett’s body like a warm, smooth shot of whiskey. Or a peachy-sweet swallow of schnapps

When it’s over, Rhett’s face is burning with want and the shame of still wanting. He somehow forces himself to look Link dead in the eye. They’re so close, close enough to kiss again, easy, but instead he stays meekly in place, bracing himself.  

"Rhett." Link is staring at him, speaking with a voice like a scrap of sandpaper, worn almost to nothing but still with some roughness to it. "C’mon, Rhett. Please. Again."

There's no smoke involved this time.

Rhett already has a pleasantly warm flush to his nerve endings and it only picks up from there when Link raises his eyebrows and grins expectantly. He's riding higher than the best weed could ever get him, just from the careful threading of Link's fingers through his hair, the electric edge of Link's tongue shyly seeking out out his own. The way his breathing begins to become more labored, the tightness there between his legs; the curling, blooming heat that stems from there, searching out everywhere under his skin and making him want to shift even closer and moan into Link's mouth. 

Link is making noises, soft and pleased-sounding. Each one goes skittering over Rhett's skin, starting where their mouths are joined and reaching outward, like a stone to the middle of the pond, ripple after ripple scattering over the surface.

In the back of his mind, he's praying his pants are baggy enough to hide his predicament, but the rest of his mind is all in, greedily sucking the juice from this moment while it's still happening.

Dark, dark hair dampening and hanging in little clumped strands, especially when Rhett fingers it, pets his hands through it. Link’s arms curling around him, crowding him, both of them breathing thick and audible now, heartbeats like horse-hooves on dirt, thunderous.

" _Damn_ ," Link sighs finally, turning it into a two-syllable word. His face is flushed, which gives Rhett a great deal of satisfaction. He's sure his own ears are a particularly stunning shade of red. 

Rhett's mouth is still hanging open. With considerable effort, he closes it. " _Yeah_."

He's somehow giddy and relaxed at the same time. No one would ever believe it even if they decided to tell anyone, the certainty of that has him downright euphoric. Rhett and Link, shotgunning and slack-limbed in the flatbed of Paul Lacot’s truck.

They'll have to move eventually, but not yet.

He’s got Link’s head on his shoulder, the buzz of marijuana and something more fogging his senses, and just enough presence of mind to strum absently at his guitar.

And then Rhett's fingers slide out of Link's hair and seek out the neck of his guitar, natural as anything, and they're right back to where they were before: Rhett singing a few languid lines of Cosmic Charlie and Link joining in, sweetly harmonizing with no effort at all.

 


End file.
